According to psychic medium and soul progression healer Gaia Chinniah, reincarnation relates to cycle of Samsara: “Samsara meaning your soul is taking on a new body, and that cycle keeps going until you reach Moksha, which is your enlightenment, or the end of your in reincarnation cycle.” As child psychiatrist and past-life researcher Jim B. Tucker, M.D., previously explained to mbg, reincarnation posits there is “carry-over from one life to another,” and we all possess “some type of consciousness entity (or in religious terms, a soul) that experiences successive lives.” “We’ve actually come here with the knowledge and wisdom that we’re here to stop repeating certain things and get to the end of certain experiences so we reach enlightenment and don’t need to come back,” she tells mbg. And even if your final goal isn’t reaching enlightenment, it can still be empowering in this lifetime to put an end to long-standing problems. As past-life regression expert Ann Barham, LMFT, previously told mbg, “Usually a client comes to me because they have some issue or problem they can’t resolve,” adding that learning about past lives can help people “look at what’s been carried forward [into this lifetime] so it can be processed and released.” As Gaia explains, getting in touch with past lives doesn’t just come naturally to everyone, whereas others (like herself) are more intuitively able to tap into other lifetimes. Once you start noticing patterns (i.e., you’ve always loved the piano even if you don’t know how to play), these could be clues about some aspect of a past life. You may even attract people with these problems, even if you’re not experiencing them firsthand, and be confused as to why the same themes seem to pop up, she adds. And she adds, “Before you go to sleep at night, ask for information about a prior lifetime that is affecting you now,” adding, “Some people do get spontaneous downloads of recollection when they do this.” “So we look at what it is you need to break and use that information to your advantage rather than using it to fuel your ego,” she explains, adding whether you were a princess or a peasant in a past life, it comes down to how you use this information to fulfill your purpose. “Looking at the reoccurring patterns and knowing your soul’s blueprint are really important for the foundation of figuring out who you are and why you are the way that you are in this lifetime,” she adds. Or as Barham puts it, understanding past lives “really broadens people’s perspective on what we’re doing on the planet, why we’re here, and the connections we have—so it’s just a great way to explore: What is this existence all about?” Whether you’re experiencing repeated patterns in your relationships, your health, or your career, Gaia notes, once you understand what’s been carried over from other lifetimes, you can “make adjustments in your life and be more conscious about what’s repeating.”
